


Chess

by Mouse9



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s04e02 The Lying Detective, Gen, probably not canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 11:57:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9322547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mouse9/pseuds/Mouse9
Summary: The game was afoot, the pieces set, the moves made.  So why did the rook fascinate her so?





	

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't seen The Final Problem yet, that's tomorrow. So I'm not sure if this is canon compliant or not. Eurus' character fascinated the hell out of me and I figured I'd write a small piece maybe on her thoughts the first time she meets her adult brother.

He was nothing like what she had expected. 

She had expected aloof, stoic, sharp-witted intelligence bordering on statue like arrogance.

She expected a god amongst men.

She hadn’t expected him to be high.

 

She was good.

She had to be.

Being the little sister of the British Government, she had to always be five steps ahead of everyone. 

She didn’t count.

She didn’t matter to them, in their cozy house with their quaint little family and that goddamn annoying mongrel.

It was pathetic. She hated pathetic things.

Queen of her own castle now she plotted and studied and planned; every minute detail of every part of her life was mapped out with such precision that she knew exactly when her guards would sneeze three weeks before they did.  She knew to be quiet, small, invisible, unnoticeable.  It was the small quiet things that were overlooked.  And overlook her they did.  That was their first mistake.  One she wouldn’t make.  Never overlook the smallest detail.  Everything and everyone counts.

She knew when to plan a coup.  She knew how it would work, when it would work and who had to be eliminated days after she arrived at her new castle.  It had taken years, decades but she was here.

Queen.

And her servants feared her.  As it should be.

 

Once she had her castle it was time to seek her revenge.  She was patient, she had all the time in the world, it wouldn’t do to get impatient.  She carefully tossed out her threads, each one more tightly woven than the next, each one winding around another thread to create intricate patterns. Nothing too obvious- no, that wouldn’t do.  But something that if the right person was looking…

 It’d taken years to create her first bit of empire, back when the guards were still patrolling the castle. It was dangerous but she’d been patient.  In the end it was worth it, she’d caught her first fish.  A minnow who thought he was a shark.

More years to weave more threads, expand her empire, bring in more people, expand her trap.  Almost twenty years to weave her trap the way it needed to be before she began to toss out bait.

Then James Moriarty had gotten impatient; had gotten a taste of power and had wanted more.  Too fast too soon.  Such was the way with men.  They had no taste for the long game.  Women are raised to be patient, to wait quietly for their turn. 

She knew he would fail in the end, men like him always did. But his fall was needed, he was an acceptable pawn in her game.  He was expendable. He served a purpose.

And serve it he did.

 

In his game she could see for the first time, her final goal.  Her reason for all of these years of building her kingdom, of creating her army of setting her chessboard.  She saw the kings, saw their moves, calculated what would happen next.  But she was a queen, and in chess, the queen won.

She watched the pawns, the bishops, the knights all playing their own game not knowing that the chessboard was so much bigger and they were all expendable.  This game had a king and before it was over, she would defeat him.  She watched his rook, watched how he started to fall into unpredictability.  It didn’t worry her, no.  As unpredictable as he was, the king would always push him back onto the path. 

That’s what big brothers were supposed to do.

The murder of Magnussen wasn’t unexpected; again, he was expendable in the game.  However, the way with which he was taken out was…unorthodox.  Something not calculated.  And the king seemed insistent on taking sacrificing his own rook.

It was time to make a move.

 

Little people with their little lives.  Death didn’t matter to her, she certainly didn’t fear it.  From her time at this castle she’d learned there were other things worse than death.  She had learned long ago not to fear them, so no, death had no hold over her.

She studied and planned and researched until finally the time had come to make a move.  It was time to confront the King by taking out a couple of his pawns.

 

He was nothing like what she’d expected. 

She’d read his files, studied his blog, his partner’s blog.  Learned.  She read newspapers, articles, watched television, read editorials.  Watched the city turn against the rook, watched the city redeem him.  She hacked into secure government sites and watched him.  Just watched.

He was ridiculous.  He was predictable in his unpredictability. At least in the beginning.  As outside influences filtered in; the pawns, the bishops, the knights, the king lost some his hold on his rook and the rook’s unpredictability became a factor that needed to be calculated before she made a move. 

In the end, she watched the rook end up alone.  Knew that one more outside influence could potentially topple him, take him off the chessboard.  And with one piece of paper another of her expendable pawns had given her, the risk was calculated and deemed to be acceptable.

So, she made her move.

 

He was nothing like what she’d expected.

She sat there, her part played perfectly.  She watched him deduce her, his fingers twitching, his movements jerky.  His flat was a disaster area, the rook himself was a disaster.  She calculated he had maybe two weeks on this path before he self-destructed.  He stood suddenly and paced the room for a moment only to fall back into his chair. 

This was not the self-contained man she had read about, watched.  This was a drunken pirate. He was high on what she calculated was heroin and meth which made the numbers change just slightly, barely a hundredth of a percentage point.  She changed her approach, pleaded for his help, his mercy.  Stroked his ego, made herself sound small and pathetic.  In the end she left, calculating a fifty percent chance he would follow her once his deductive reasoning had caught up with his brain and put the pieces together. 

She was stepping though the downstairs door when he’d called out to her, half falling down the stairs, yelling how her life was not her own.  A memory flashed through her mind and she immediately erased it.  Sentiment had never done her any good.  She’d learned that at a very early age.  She relied on reasoning, calculations, manipulations.  They had served her well.   His brain had finally caught up, he’d spotted her tells and some that she hadn’t meant to show.  The scars weren’t from her, they were from another.  They had made her strong, had been essential in teaching her how not to fear.  They had been reopened as a necessity.

Then, he’d decided they needed chips.

 

He was nothing like what she’d expected. 

They ate chips at a bus stop, not quite unlike the one where she’d seduced his pawn, and talked.  That it, until a helicopter with a spotlight appeared out of nowhere. 

“Big brother is watching.”  She commented.

“Literally,” he answered, unaware of the double entendre.

Then they walked, in a seemingly random pattern, always the helicopter following them, following him.  She made sure to remain out of sight, a feat she could claim, if pressed- not that she would be, was due to her injury. By her calculations, the King would think that his rook was hallucinating from the drugs, not bothering to search out any other possibilities.  The rook had been so unpredictable that it had made the king so very predictable.

They walked all night, and talked.  She asked questions and he explained them, so innocently, so sure of his intelligence that it was almost like a lecture.  He was succinct, but never cruel-she knows that was the drugs coursing through his veins as she’d seen how carelessly cruel he could be.  She saw none of his cruelties now, none of his previous careless dismissals or inattentiveness.  He was all accommodation.

“Well that’s interesting.”

“What is.”

“The way you think.”  It actually was fascinating to watch him.  Like a new toy.  He strutted around the bend on the sidewalk, all amiability towards her comment.

“Superbly?”

She had to hold back a smile.

“Sweetly.”

He slowed his steps, his cockiness diminishing. 

“I’m not sweet, I’m just high.”

_“You’re so sweet, I could just eat you up.”_

_“I’m not sweet, I’m profound.”_

 

They walked across the bridge as the sun was beginning to rise when she finally asked him why they were randomly wandering around the city.  He gave her a mischievous look and told her it took a while to spell bollocks.

The answer invoked a surprised laugh from her.  It seemed the rook was capable of small retaliations after all.

The sun was up when they stopped by the edge of the Thames.  She sat on a bench watching him as he leaned against the stone work of the ledge overlooking the river.  Her plan was set, her traps laid, her calculations correct.  Everything would still proceed as planned.  But this walk, this…alone time with her Apollo, her Helenus, was nice.  She allowed memories of younger days, chasing after him on the edge of a lake, barefoot as he ran haphazardly with a wooden sword.  If she was a sentimental woman she would think that this was lovely, walking with him in quiet intellectual conversation, just two halves of a whole catching up.  She could quite easily convince herself that she liked him, in these moments.

Her half, her twin…her brother.

“You’re not what I expected.”  She said.

He’d gotten a case of vertigo, she’d seen it in his face, and was clutching onto the stone banister, the high beginning to wear off.  She saw his hands shaking and knew her time was almost up.  Addicts coming down from a high were emotional, irrationally angry and short tempered.  She did not want to face his anger, especially when hers was tenuously held by a thread.  They shared this unfortunate trait.

“What am I?”  he asked her.

She smiled as she watched the shakes and delusions from the withdrawals beginning. 

“Nicer.”

“Than who?” He was struggling, she could see it.  It would be so easy to put him out of his misery.  But she needed him to tie up this one last loose thread.  She did so hate them waving about.

“Anyone.”

He was still.

She waited a bit more, to see if he would move before standing. 

She could quite easily convince herself that she liked him. 

She walked away, leaving him alone on the waterfront like she had so many decades ago. 

Sentiment was a weakness. And there was no more time for memories. 

There was a King to capture.

 

 

 


End file.
